5 Ways A Health Coach Can Help You Chart A Healthier Lifestyle

Whether it’s striving to eat right, exercise or follow doctors’ orders, there are some days when living healthy is just tough. One week, you are hitting your goals with eating and exercise, and your stress level is humming at a low rate. Then the next week, you feel like everything is out of your reach and impossible to manage.

But rather than be discouraged, those difficult days are the perfect time to think about ways a health coach can help chart out a path to get you back on track and succeed in meeting your health and wellness goals.

Here are five ways a health coach helps clients achieve success through motivation:

1. Eating and Exercise

Nutrition and exercise are two of the most important factors in managing weight. But how do you know if you are doing it right? Just because you eat fairly nutritious meals and make it a point to get moving, doesn't mean you are combining the two in the best way possible to maximize your results. A health coach can work with you to tweak your food intake and work through personal barriers that might interfere with your success.

2. Managing Chronic Conditions

It's no secret that chronic conditions can interfere with overall quality of life. A health coach can work with you on ways to incorporate tools that may help with things like relaxation, communicating effectively with family, appropriate use of medications, and more.

3. Accountability

So you've decided to take charge of your life, but now what? How are you going to stay on track on those hard days where you just want to throw in the towel? Health coaches are there to step in and hold you accountable to your actions. After all, you might think it's not worth it to sneak in that chocolate chip cookie if you know you'll have to fess up to it later.

4. Tuning Out The Noise

We live in a busy world where everything is now, now, now, and everyone likes to think they are experts in everything. Outside influences can and will bombard your senses and can be overwhelming. For instance, once others know you are aiming for a better lifestyle, they might start putting in their own "two cents" worth of information. Health coaches focus on information specific to your goals and stay focused on what you want to achieve, not what others think you should do.

5. Long-term Goals

Changing habits and setting goals are important, but they do not happen overnight. This is a marathon, not a sprint. A health coach can help you create a plan that is specific to your goals, and set it up in a way that is comfortable and attainable in your time frame, not anyone else's.

Now that you can see the benefits of using a health coach, did you know you could talk with one for FREE?

The Living Healthier Coaching Hotline is a free service -- offered through the Texas-based nonprofit organization It’s Time Texas, and funded in part by BlueCross BlueShield of Texas’ Healthy Kids, Healthy Families grant -- and is available to anyone by calling: 1 (430) 216-0585. Living Healthier coaches take calls in English and Spanish weekdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. CT. Clients may call as often as they like and there is never a charge.

Coaches help clients achieve success by really getting to know them through frequent phone conversations.

“If somebody wants to make life changes, like eating healthier or exercising more, sometimes they just need the extra help and that’s where we come in. As a phone health coach, we provide the support for the steps they take. And we do this in a very compassionate manner,” said Hector Gonzalez, a bilingual Living Healthier Coach for It’s Time Texas.

Click on these links to learn more about It's Time Texas Healthier Living and free coaching: